how to outlive your friends, and other tales of immortality
by fergusonbishop
Summary: Jess is Nick, and Nick is Jess. Glimpses into a universe that isn't.


Jessica Day knew it, the exact moment that she fell in love with Nick Miller.

He was wearing a red and white flannel shirt and khakis and looked like Canada, and she felt the dumbwaiter of sexual desire drop right to her lady parts.

"I'm uh, I'm Nick, um- Nick from Craigslist? I responded to your ad, remember? I'm zombielovernick at gmail. Not that I'm a zombie lover, well- I actually think zombies are fantastic, but um, I'm alive in um, you know- when I'm being a lover."

He had a West Coast accent that turned "lover" into "love-ahhhr", that sounded like lather, and to Jess sounded like she would not have minded having Nick's fingers massaging her discount shampoo through her hair.

" _Niiiick_.", she drawled out, not quite sure what to do. Jess' brow furrowed, and she could feel her pelvic muscles contract not entirely of her own will.

Nick spoke too quickly, his words overlapping and slipping into one another, as Jess blinked back from the oddly unwavering straight-ahead stare of his huge brown eyes. Huge was not in this case an exaggeration; Nick looked like a puppy from one of those dog breeds with the huge eyes Jess always saw on Humane Society TV ads, and seemed to be begging though he was smiling up at her expectantly.

There was a blurry line in her mind, where Nick the Puppy crowed " _Please Adopt Me!_ ", and Nick the Human said " _May I come in?_ " where there was nothing Jess wanted to do more than jump into his arms and stroke his hair. She wondered if he had any pets at all, as she tried to compose herself and will words out of her mouth while the awkward silence between them continued.

Nick was actually… _a Crazy Person_ ; she thought, a breath still hitched in the back of her throat. _He's crazy and he's going to destroy you and everything you hold dear. Everything, Jessica!_

"Right. Okay, um, Nick- why don't you just take a seat over here on our couch and uh- I'm gonna get the others.", Jess told him, as she led them into the loft's living room.

There were several weeks' worth of trashy tabloids she had stolen from the bar's bathroom strewn across the table, and a six-pack of beer, the cardboard case torn open from the was lying underneath it with a pair of someone's running shoes. Nick ambled carefully through, and ran his fingers across every surface in his path, from their new flatscreen television to the kitchen island. He missed the couch completely, and almost tripped over himself to touch the skylight windows that Jess had put in their ad as the pride of their whole building. " _You can kind of see the ocean if you squint while using binoculars, just like in nature._ ", she had written. " _Very good for observing various types of ocean life, such a whales, but they look very small from here._ "

"There's so much _space_.", Nick marveled. "Caroline hated space. She said if you didn't know everything around you, you couldn't know what might hurt you. It's a crappy way to live, don't you think? Maybe it's better that there's things we don't know. The spice of life. _Adventure_!"

Jess nodded, and her mouth went dry again. She wanted him, plain and simple. She wanted to kiss him, and rip down the button fly of his clean-pressed pants and stroke him hard enough that he would get on his knees for without a second thought. She wanted to slap him, shake him by the shoulders and kick his shins until they bruised, and beat the sense into Nick With Puppy Eyes that the Spice of Life came from amaretto sours, not adventure. _God_ , it was his optimism, and the stupid smile and genuine wonder he held for the scratched, yellowed, skylights made her so angry. Nick made Jess angry enough to feel a throbbing she recognized as desire, and that was the most disgusting part of the entire situation.

"Um- anyway, Nick…please, sit down and try not to touch anything else. Sorry, one of my roommates is really particular about his stuff.", she choked out, making a quick exit while Nick turned a snow globe from Detroit over in his hands.

Schmidt and Coach were strapped to the door gym, soaked with sweat while the screamed at each other about pectorals. Jess was no athlete, but there was something about their red-faced enthusiasm that she liked. They were happy, and although Jess had long since realized happiness was this force-fed public delusion that put stock in a brain chemical so people thought life was filled with hope, her friends deserved the delusion for so long as they wanted it. She hated to get between them, and playfully rolled her eyes while Schmidt grunted his complaints.

" _Jessica Day! You do not get between a man and his chest day!_ "

"You came with me to a mammogram, Schmidt! We get into people's chest stuff in this loft!"

She had known Schmidt since college, when a mix-up had put him into her female dorm, and somehow, they had clicked quickly enough that Jess had reconsidered suing Syracuse University for placing her in a situation where harassment was inevitable. Schmidt had come from Long Island, and in those days, had been 300 pounds of mostly Kosher meat, and far more self-esteem than was advisable for a male who wore maternity pants. Jess had been fat in middle school, and offered him weight-loss tips in exchange for tickets to see Bon Jovi, two seemingly innocuous gestures that fueled their now nine-year-old relationship, which fell squarely into the category of not-quite Will and Grace.

When they had moved to Los Angeles to make it big, Schmidt had changed everything. His body, his attitude, and most of all, the kinds of girls who he let fall literally into his bare lap. Gone was Elizabeth, the goofy girl he dated who Jess remembered toasting to at graduation, replaced by a sometimes recurring one-night-stands from his marketing firm. Schmidt had made good on their promise, and Jess had barely limped to the finish line at UCLA Law, and passed the bar just to end up behind one.

She thought she was in the upper echelon of mid-level hole-in-the-wall bartenders, at least. _Jessica Day, Bar None_ , she liked to joke.

"Aw, hell no! Leave your boob talk outside! You got men at work here. What's up, J-Dog?"

Coach draped a towel over his shoulders and glanced at her expectantly.

Sweat made his muscles glisten, positioning him in the juncture between sexy and intimidating. Underneath his sweatbands and raging talking points about various sports, Jess knew him to be sweetheart. He was the kind of person who held open doors for old women at the bank while having no fewer than three girls in his bed the night before, and called her a hot mess in the same breath that he promised to make her coffee every hungover morning since he had lived with them.

"We have…a _guy_ situation.", she began, and bit down on her bottom lip as Coach and Schmidt winced in unison.

" _Jeeeeeessss_. How many times to I have to tell you that under no circumstance do you ever take Spencer's calls again? The man is like a human amoeba. All he does is _suck-suck-suck_ until you're part of him and good luck breaking free of that single celled organism!", Schmidt moaned.

"That makes _no_ sense-!", Coach cut in. He shook his head, and frowned as though he was deep in thought as he tried to comprehend Schmidt's latest poor metaphor. "Jess, did you booty call Spencer again? He cheated on you, mama, c'mon. He doesn't deserve you and now Schmidt and I here gotta give him a ride home, again-"

"I never booty called him! I butt-dialed and it just happened to be him, and we just happened to both be really horny and-"

"Oh, so your butt cheeks can text now? Do they text in unison? Did Ricky on the Right send him "I miss the feeling of your juicebox in my lunch?" Who calls it lunch, Jess? _Who. Calls. It. Lunch!?_ " Schmidt nearly screeched as waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"You named my butt cheeks? Jar, Schmidt! _Jar_! That is definitely going in the douchebag jar!", Jess shouted back. She jabbed Schmidt in the center of his well-formed pectorals and glowered.

"Hey- um, guys…and uh…woman, sorry to interrupt, I just really need a visit to the little boys room and I- I waited on the couch, but my trojan horse is going to breach an intestinal wall-"

Nick adjusted his voice to a wheezing impression of what Jess assumed was some fantasy wizard. " _-intestines! Intestine's everywhere!_ "

"I really wanted to avoid that, so-", he trailed off in his normal voice, so bright and smooth that Jess felt she should have her tubes tied in that very moment to keep herself from degrading the female gender every time she was in Nick Miller's earshot.

"Down the hall! Make a left!", Schmidt and Jess shouted in unison, eyes still locked to one another, far too invested in winning the latest in the series of battles their friendship is built on to care that Nick, a possible Crazy Person, is in their apartment.

"Um…okay. Thanks."

He shuffled off down the carpet, and Coach's eyes narrowed, as he watched watching the volley between his roommates with hardly masked exasperation.

"Dude who looks like Canada just walked into our place and pointed at his penis doing a Dumbledore voice…Dude is now going to our bathroom. Anybody got something for that?"

"I told you we had a guy situation!", Jess wailed. "That's Nick, from our Craigslist ad. Remember? Winston's contract got extended so we needed someone else to help make up rent. That's him."

" _Noooooo._ _Nononononono. No._ You were supposed to ask Cece to move in!"

"I'm not asking my best friend to move in with us just so you can jump her any time of day, Schmidt!"

"She's a model, Jessica! Or do you not want your second-oldest and best friend to have beautiful mixed-race children with you first oldest best friend, an actual Indian goddess of the river Thames?"

Jess made an inhuman noise of absolute displeasure, and wrenched Schmidt's arm behind hers.

"It's pronounced _Tims_ , you…. _ninny_!", she screamed, dragging Schmidt towards the island bar in their kitchen where their douchebag jar was overflowing with dollar bills, mostly small change all from Schmidt.

"Then why is it spelled like James with a _Th_?", he protested, his voice rising by an octave to match hers.

" _Because! They're! British!_ "

By then, Jess had Schmidt's hand forced into the top of the jar while he yelped in half-surprise, half-pain, trying to lightly slap her arm away. Coach shook his head, and allowed the ruckus to continue as he snapped two quick photos of the pair for later blackmail. Perhaps in another life, Jess and Schmidt were raising their children making Bar Mitzvah plans and modelling their wedding after People Magazine's Style Watch. At the very least, Jess lay claim to Schmidt's respect, something that she shared with only his mother on most days, which Coach thought was worth it to respect as well.

Jess and Schmidt were just so weird.

"Okay- hey, guys, before we have to go to the ER again- let's just all go to our happy places and-", he began, only to be cut off by Nick, who laid his hand on Jess' shoulder as she struggled half-earnestly against Schmidt.

Coach had never thought of how small Jess was before, her sullen presence usually overcast the loft and made her impossible to ignore, and when that cleared, she drank over her weight in cheap beers and discount liquor, easily matching and quickly surpassing Schmidt when they went out. Nick's fingers reached down from her collarbone to just squarely on her breast. Jess' muscles had tensed under his touch, and Coach hated himself for noticing exactly how her pale flesh swelled under his hand as she breathed.

"Hey-", he started.

" _Unhand her!_ ", Schmidt snapped. "I'm calling the police. I don't let strange men with unwashed, post-bathroom hands touch my best friend! Especially not on the boob!"

" _Schmidt!_ "

"I'm sorry you got cheated on.", Nick blurted out, suddenly. "Because um- that happened to me, too. I know exactly how you feel right now. Caroline and I were together for six years and I really thought we were it, then one day, I thought it was time to make her an honest woman. So, I had this whole thing set up, the rose petals leading up to the bathtub and a lot of scented oils because she was into that natural stuff, and I was wearing my sexy Downton Abbey butler outfit-"

He changed his voice again, and called out in a high-pitched British accent " _-m'lady, a count wishes to make your acquaintance in his court-_ "

"-Uh, you know…anyway, I had all that set up, and I came home early so I could make sure the whole thing was perfect, but- the shower was already running and I thought someone broke in, because it's LA, and I ran upstairs with my Dad's old gun, which by the way wasn't loaded, because I don't really believe in that, but, um- but- she was in the bathtub doing…very sexy things with my boss. It was, uh- I might have panicked and there was uh- moonwalking involved in that-"

Schmidt sucked in his breath. "Oh, my God. Not the old panic moonwalk!"

"Yeah. So that happened. But…onwards and upwards, right?", Nick finished his story. Jess hated herself, as her eyes drifted down past Nick's waist.

Onwards and upwards, hm- she thought, rolling his words around in her mouth. Jess' cheeks were burning, from just about everything but embarrassment.

"Please get your hand off my um- my boob."

Nick sprung backward. "Sorry- I'm definitely working on that, boundaries and stuff. Sorry."

Nick was moved in by the middle of the week, his belongings having fit neatly into two U-Haul trailers which Jess saw parked beside the building's dumpster as she came in from her night shift at the bar. It was barely sunrise, the kind of time when even Los Angeles was quiet and she could hear the cawing of seagulls from the beach that was almost an hour's drive away. She and the guys had made a surprisingly quick and unanimous decision about their new roommate, Crazy Person Nick with his dumb big Dog Eyes who was going to ruin Jess' life.

"He's very clean and organized. Unlike someone we know.", Schmidt had hissed during their impromptu roommate meeting in the hallway, while Nick tooled around in the kitchen.

"That's because I don't have a diagnosed obsessive personality, Schmidt!"

"I dunno...he seems alright. It's not like we're gonna have to worry about any low class hookers using our toilets with this dude.", Coach considered.

"That never happened! Christina was a stripper with a heart of gold who was only doing...that to put herself through college! She just got accepted to Columbia, just by the way!"

Jess dragged Schmidt to the jar.

"Yeah, you can move in, Nick.", she told him, while Schmidt was digging for a dollar bill in the pocket of his pants.

With the benefit of several days distance, Jess still felt like Nick would turn her insides into gooey banana mush.

He mostly stayed out of everyone's way, leaving fairly early in the day and returning just as Jess left. She had no idea what he did for work, except that there pictures of smiling children cropping up on the refrigerator and a great deal of anatomical diagrams spread over their living room table. Once Jess got over the hump of the three hours of Nick-induced sperm donor research she did online, and really thought about it, she thought Nick might have been a doctor. A kids' doctor, and maybe he did a lot of work for free clinics, since he was poor enough to live with two other guys and a girl.

It was an interesting fantasy to say the least, Nick in his cartoon character scrubs and probably a silly stethoscope that made honking noises to make kids laugh before he pulled out the real one, sitting in one of those chairs that spun and turning around to declare to a faceless child and his family that it was definitely not cancer. Not that Jess told all this to Schmidt, who had the benefit of walking into the loft just as she self-completed on the couch.

" _Jesssss._ ", he groaned, laying down a paper bag of groceries on their counter.

"I know you think about financial stability and your future child's bar mitzvah, too! I bet it's gonna be Saturday Night Live themed and the rabbi is gonna come out and say " _Ladies and Gentlemen, your host for the night- Schmidt's kid!_ "

Schmidt's manicured brows knitted as he shot her a worried look. "Jess...is that...is that what you were thinking about? Financial stability and your children's Bar Mitzvah?"

" _N-no._ Of course not!", she chuckled, waving her free hand in his direction. "I- just- Cece gave me this awesome porn from her trip to Europe and it's very European...you know? It's got a story and character development, and I think it's about rugby players in boarding school but I'm uh- I'm just watching a sexy film noir , as one does."

"Jess, your laptop is sitting closed on the table. I can see it from here. Admit it, you were totally thinking of your own little Miss Shoshana Day, weren't you?"

"It's playing in my head, Schmidt! It's that good!"

Schmidt had texted her incoherently a few times about Nick being "manic", but then again, she had not seen Schmidt in about a week, either. He was holed up in his room, save for brewing his pretentious coffees in the morning, presumably working on a new project which Jess guessed was probably a sex position. Coach had new clients and for the most part, she guessed Nick must have been left alone in the apartment for several hours a day, which necessitated locking her door and taking careful inventory of what was inside.

Nick was not by nature a thieving scourge, but Jess had a nice pair of sunglasses from the year 1997 and the original Astronaut Barbie with only some hair missing, and who knew what that might go for on Ebay now?

He had touched her boob and told them all some sob story about his ex and somehow that made him even more wildly attractive, a conversation she had with Cece the night before while she closed up Clyde's on the corner of their street.

Big Bob, the owner, too great pains to regularly remind Jess she was only hired because this was LA, where everyone was a bleeding heart and demanded bartender diversity, so since she had a vagina and wanted it, she was in. Jess thought she made a great bartender mostly because she loved to drink and therefore knew what to serve, though Clyde's was hardly a classy bar and she was usually relegated to using her trusty keychain can opener to pop the tabs off bottles of cheap beer.

Cece had been her best friend since the third grade, when she had moved into the house across the street from Jess in the sprawling Chicago suburb where they had grown up. The Day house still had the rope swing that she and Cece used to jump into piles of leaves every fall, now hanging like a noose from branches that had grown far too long in the past twenty years, like a noose.

"I think I like him. Like…he's not even hot but he's…. _ugh_.", Jess sighed. "I need to get laid.", she declared.

"Damn right!", Cece laughed. "But Jess...I mean, not that I want to be a cockblock, but you live with him now. And uh, maybe he faked his story and he has something."

"The only thing Nick has is like...well, his bedsheets and three towels with different sea creatures on them and a lot, I mean a lot of cute little zombies on keychains in his room. I think he gives them out to kids who he has to break the news to at work. " _Sorry you're dying of a brain tumor, Johnny, but there's lots of hope you'll come back as a zombie!_ "

"Jess...what- Oh my God, this is it. It's happening. You're finally falling in _looooove._ ", Cece teased. Out of the two of them, she was the one who believed in the impossible. She worked as a model and had always been the one to take the leap of faith. Jess was pretty sure that if she had also called the modelling agency who had given Cece their card, she would have a shot at her best friend's glamorous life, eating cotton balls instead of food and jetting off to exotic islands to have her picture taken and have sex.

But in a world of Cece's and Jess's, Jess was- well, not a Cece. She had a job and a life and people to take care of. Who would take care of Schmidt by killing the spider in the drain if Jess were in Morroco with a man? Who was going to keep Coach's condom supply stocked if Jess was too busy popping zits and counting calories? It was a secret pleasure of hers, to have a purpose when it seemed like everyone else her age was searching for theirs.

"Shut up! I'm not in love, Cece, that's so fake. I'm just- I mean, I'm a thirty-year-old woman with a fantastic life, why shouldn't I be having sex with a hot guy who just moved in with me?"

"Jess, you literally keep your bills in a box under your bed, you wash the same shirt every night and one time you wore a bikini underneath your bridesmaid dress because you ran out of clean underwear. I'm a hot mess and I can tell you, you're like the sun of hot messes. But- 'kay, give me a visual here. What's Nick's body like? Is he a P90X guy or more like, a guy who could look straight wearing Burberry?", Cece asked, leaning across the bar as she tossed her hair over her shoulders, sipping on a vodka soda.

"Uh- he's kinda like...a dad, but like a young, hot- okay so maybe he doesn't have a kid yet but he's been trying for a while and he painted the nursery, probably green and yellow."

"Dad bod? Jess, you're into a guy with a dad bod? You're so in love. _So_ in love. When's the wedding? My brother's a DJ, just so you know."

"You don't even have a brother!"

"But I can find one!"

Jess rolled her eyes, trying her hardest to appear nonchalant. Nick was going to ruin her, and she wanted him to breach her wall and splatter her intestines all over the skylights in the loft, singing her Greek songs of victory in his doctor lab coat.

Cece was right, she was far gone and since Spencer, it was the best she had felt in a while.


End file.
